Acer TravelMate 8371

Introduction

This is a compatibility guide to running Linux with the Acer TravelMate 8371 laptop. If you have the Acer TravelMate 8371 and are running Linux on it please consider editing this page or adding a comment below with your compatibility details. By contributing you will help other people running this laptop or trying to make a decision on whether to buy it or not.

Linux Compatibility

Notes

You can enter any specific notes with running Linux on the Acer TravelMate 8371 here.

Setting up the mic

This paragraph is here only for legacy reasons. By now, everything works out of the box.

I tested on Ubuntu 9.10 and got it working. It seems to be a problem of PulseAudio. If there is some expert arround here, who can tell what has to be done to run it with any other distribution, please edit this note.
Also this is only important if you want to use the mic with applications, that do not directly use alsa. Unlike audacity and like Skype, in example.

**Only confirmed for Ubuntu 9.10Be careful. This may do harm to your system!

The issue with this mic is, that it got a mono input, but the software tries to get it stereo.
So we have to turn of one channel completely.

1.You have to do: sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic
2.Then reboot.
3.Now install pavucontrol. Open it and go to input. There you have to unmute the mic if it's not already,
click on this “channels together” button. Set as fallback should be activated. Now you mute one channel and set the other one to 40-60% (should be save). And thats it.

Careful: Do NOT use your Gnome audio setup to control the microphone - this will destroy your settings and you have to step 3 once again.
Also this doesn't even seem to work for Kubuntu 9.10. So PLEASE suggest a better version of this.

Summary

Works like a charm. There doesn't seem to be any driver for the Egistek fingerprint reader built into this laptop.

1. untar it2. change to the directory where you saved it3. execute sudo ./autorun.sh4. edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf using sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf5. in the blacklist, make a comment like #new ethernet driver (wol fix) and then blacklist r81696. execute sudo update-initramfs -u in a console, DONE

Lukas, 2010/04/05 12:46

Thank you very much!

It's working now like a charm. :)

Bruno, 2011/08/21 12:09

not for me …:(reboot .. for suspend and hibernate

have you a solution?

Grok, 2010/04/05 07:44

WORKAROUND for suspend to ram problem:

Add the i8042.reset=1 kernel parameter in GRUB.To do this, change the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in /etc/default/grub to look like GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash i8042.reset=1” and execute “sudo update-grub”

But at the moment I'm trying to get suspend to ram working (kernel 2.6.30-ARCH). The machine suspends correctly but when it tries to wake up from resume the (SATA) disk isn't spinning/doesnt get waked up. Yesterday it worked twice after I changed to IDE mode in BIOS, the disk was spinning and the machine resumed but now everything is broken again… I changed some stuff to try various other methods and now i cant find the working state again. I'm going to look into this…

Lukas, 2009/09/23 16:49

The card reader is working too!

But at the moment I'm trying to get suspend to ram working (kernel 2.6.30-ARCH). The machine suspends correctly but when it tries to wake up from resume the (SATA) disk isn't spinning/doesnt get waked up. Yesterday it worked twice after I changed to IDE mode in BIOS, the disk was spinning and the machine resumed but now everything is broken again… I changed some stuff to try various other methods and now i cant find the working state again. I'm going to look into this…

Adrian, 2011/01/11 00:00

Lukas, have you got supspend to ram working?

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